


"Don't I Know You?" She Said

by Scorpius_Wears_Short_Skirts



Category: Sweeney Todd (2007), Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, F/M, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26608612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scorpius_Wears_Short_Skirts/pseuds/Scorpius_Wears_Short_Skirts
Summary: What if Mr. Todd had actually looked at the 'Mad Hag' in the beginning?
Relationships: Lucy Barker/Sweeney Todd
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	"Don't I Know You?" She Said

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to the 2012 London Cast Recording of Sweeney Todd when I thought of this.

"Don't I know you, Mister?" Said the woman, gripping his arm tightly enough to bruise.

His first instinct was to push the offending hand away, annoyed at the assault and interruption to his conversation with the young sailor, Anthony. But he saw her face, lined with years of stress and making her appear older than she was. Once-yellow hair faded now, some of it loose from her hood. She was sickly, and he could feel her shaking from where her hand was still clutching onto his sleeve.

"Lucy," Benjamin realised. "Oh god, what's happened to you?"

"I know you." She said again, like she was having trouble holding onto the thought. "I know…"

"I've come home, I have." Benjamin assured her, moving to hold her but stopping as she whimpered, letting go of his sleeve and flinching away. 

"Mister Todd?" Anthony asked, watching the exchange with bare confusion.

"My wife…" Benjamin explained briefly. "Or what's left of her." He added quietly. Returning his attention to the faded woman, glad she hadn't fully run away from him, he couldn't help but ask. "Johanna. Where's our girl?"

"Girl…" Lucy echoed, sitting and holding herself. She began to rock. "My baby…" 

There was no way that Johanna would still be a baby. Not after so many years had passed. Clearly Lucy didn't know where Johanna was or what had happened to her. Benjamin bid the sailor goodbye, gently pulling the woman up to walk her away from the open street and into a shop that was near where they had once lived. 

It was a pie shop, and clearly not the best. Still, it was somewhere out of the way and quiet besides. Cheap too, even if the pies themselves much to be desired.

"Well with the price of meat what it is, when you get it." The owner of the shop, Mrs. Lovett said, sighing. " _If_ you get it. Still, better than Mrs. Mooney's down the street. Noticed all her neighbor's cats have disappeared… Wouldn't do in my shop. Cats is too damn quick." 

The crust of what the woman gave them was alright, though thin. Hardly a scrap of meat within and the carrots and potatoes tasted bitter. Benjamin couldn't swallow it, but Lucy ate ravenously as if she were starving. Because she was starving, and it made Benjamin's blood boil. Had no one at all helped her in his absence? What had even happened to her to put her so far out of her mind?

"That's Turpin's fault, that is." Mrs. Lovett said, sitting down next to Lucy and petting her hair softly.

"Nellie." Lucy acknowledged, more welcoming of a fellow woman's touch.

"Poor thing." Mrs Lovett sighed, and explained how Lucy had been lured into her brief but severe torture. "Took a poison after that. She lived but it left her weak in her head. For months she just lied in bed. I feed her when I have the means but… Times is hard." 

"If I had been here…" Benjamin shook his head. There was nothing he could have done. But he was here now. He surely could do something to help now that he had returned.

"She really should be in Bedlam."

"No." Benjamin said quickly. He had spent enough time parted from his heart. "I won't be away from her for one more second."

Mrs. Lovett's jaw tensed as she thought, then she clicked her tongue and stood. "What's your name?"

She knew already, of course. Benjamin knew she knew. Still though, Benjamin Barker was supposed to be in prison. He had to become someone else. Luckily age had changed his face enough that only close friends would recognize him and he had never had many of those. Even Mrs. Lovett only knew him because she and his wife had been friends. Still friends in some sense, it seemed.

"It'll be Todd now." He answered, using the same name he had taken overseas. 

"Sweeney Todd then." Mrs. Lovett nodded. "Suits you. Has a ring, right." She began to clean up her work counter, flicking a cockroach out of the pile of flour before saving what she could of it. "Come upstairs when she's done eating. I've saved something for when you got back, if ever you did."

Lucy didn't take long to eat and it was a wonder she didn't choke with how large her bites were. She bit her fingers, not bothering with the fork she had been given. It was pitiful to see. Even more pitiful how many tries it took to get her to follow him upstairs. Once there in the bare room she took a space in the corner, sitting and curling up. She didn't trust him, and it broke his heart. 

Mrs. Lovett didn't bat an eye, used to the behavior. She was more focused on working a floorboard loose. She pulled a small tin box out, holding it out with both hands for Todd to take.

It was shaving razors. His old profession neatly arranged in a box and still shining in the light as if they were polished just yesterday. As he held them he found that his hands still knew their handles well. 

Old friends indeed. 

"Thank you, Mrs. Lovett." He said quietly, closing up the box and allowing a ghost of a smile grace his tired features. "You could have sold them."

"Lucy would have had my head for it." Mrs. Lovett joked. "If she weren't off hers."

"She will get better." Todd said sternly, not allowing himself to consider otherwise. To do so would be to give up on her and he would never do such a thing. As long as he believed it he could make it so. "I will help her get better."

"Good luck." Mrs. Lovett sniffed. 

"Do you know where Johanna is?" Todd asked.

"Baby…" Lucy muttered before starting to hum a half-forgotten lullaby.

Mrs. Lovett told Mr. Todd all she knew, deeply sympathetic. Mr. Todd only grew angrier at the fact that both his wife's mind and his daughter had been stolen away by the same Judge who had sent him away for no crime at all. He decided he would set it all right, and at any cost. He would get his daughter back, and he would help his wife.

"Lucy's never going to be how she once was." Mrs. Lovett pointed out.

"Neither will I." Todd replied. "People will always change. We can only be who we are now."

Mrs. Lovett couldn't help but wish her own late husband would have loved her so unconditionally.


End file.
